Devops and cloud—both concepts are hot, for good reason. Let’s take a look at the current state of devops and cloud, and how they fit into today’s technology sets.
Devops provides an approach and a group of technologies that help enterprise developers do a better, faster job of creating applications. It also eliminates the barriers between development and operations (thus the name “devops”).
The cloud, meaning the public cloud, provides the platform for devops. Although you can certainly do devops on premises, most enterprises want to reduce costs and increase speed. The cloud is where you look for those benefits.
All you have to do is mix devops and the cloud, like mixing chocalate and peanut butter, right? Well, no. Enterprises have made big blunders with devops and the cloud. Here are three elements you should understand to avoid making those blunders yourself.
1. You need a hybrid solution to devops
Today’s public clouds do not provide one-stop-shopping for devops. Although they have application development management, including support for devops, it’s still a world where you’ll have to cobble together a solution from a mix of products that includes public cloud services and, yes, traditional software.
For example, although you can have pipeline management and continuous integration services on most public clouds, you’ll have to go old-school for continuous testing and continuous deployment. The degree to which your services are cloud-centric versus local-platform-centric will make a big difference in that mix.
2. Devops isn’t as cheap as the cloud
Because you must use traditional platforms along with public clouds, the costs are higher than you’d expect. Many organizations budget the devops solution assuming it’s all cloud-based. But it isn’t. As a result, there are cost overruns all over the place when it comes to devops and the cloud.
3. The devops tools aren't all here yet
Although vendors and IT organizations both continue to learn about the continuous development, testing, integration, and deployment that are fundamental to devops, we’re nowhere near nirvana. The super tools that automate everything, cloud or not, aren't here yet.
The sales pitch for devops is often like that of getting a superhighway, but in reality that highway has lots of stoplights. You still have to stop and perform manual processes as a part of devops automation. There’s no getting around it right now.
One day, we will get a true superhighway. The technology is getting there. But right now both devops and the cloud are works in progress. You should do devops, but understand the road you'll actually be traveling.